7 Dec 2017 21:00

Without Rostec Russian army would have been unable to demonstrate its might - Putin

NOVO-OGARYOVO. Dec 7 (Interfax) - Without the Rostec state corporation, Russia could have been left without whole segments in its defense-industrial complex and without the potent army it boasts today, Russian president Vladimir Putin said.

"I remember what we were guided by then, when we were setting up Rostec [ten years ago]. The logic was very simple. We could simply lose some of the segments in our defense industry, without which we would have been unable to create modern weapon systems. There simply would not have been any," Putin said at a Rostec staff award ceremony on the occasion of the state corporation's tenth anniversary.

Without the decision to create Rostec "today our army would have been unlikely to demonstrate its might, unlikely to look as modern and efficient, had the critically important enterprises been lost for our country," Putin said.

He was commenting on remarks made by Rostec head Sergei Chemezov, who recalled that the idea of setting up Rostec then had more opponents than supporters.

Chemezov said: "You remember how skeptical some government members were when the corporation was being founded. Everyone thought that the corporation would be this big soap bubble that would collapse sooner or later. That the state simply needed to sell its assets into private hands, basically, for peanuts."

The staff of Rostec corporation, "by their work, have proven that it is possible to do otherwise, and today the value of the assets that were handed over to the state corporation has tripled to about three trillion rubles," Chemezov said.